Wendy nodded-of course she thought Danny would be quite a man-but the doctor's explanation struck her as glib. It tasted more like margarine than butter. Edmonds had not lived with them. He had not been there when Danny found lost buttons, told her that maybe the TV Guide was under the bed, that he thought he better wear his rubbers to nursery school even though the sun was out... and later that day they had walked home under her umbrella through the pouringrain. Edmonds couldn't know of the curious way Danny had of preguessing them both. She would decide to have an unusual evening cup of tea, go out in the kitchen and find her cup out with a tea bag in it. She would remember that the books were due at the library and find them all neatly piled up on the hall table, her library card on top. Or Jack would take it into his head to wax the Volkswagen and find Danny already out there, listening to tinny top-forty music on his crystal radio as he sat on the curb to watch.
Aloud she said, "Then why the nightmares now? Why did Tony tell him to lock the bathroom door?"
"I believe it's because Tony has outlived his usefulness," Edmonds said. "He was born-Tony, not Danny-at a time when you and your husband were straining to keep your marriage together. Your husband was drinking too much. There was the incident of the broken arm. The ominous quiet between you."
Ominous quiet, yes, that phrase was the real thing, anyway. The stiff, tense meals where the only conversation had been please pass the butter or Danny, eat the rest of your carrots or may I be excused, please. The nights when Jack was gone and she had lain down, dry-eyed, on the couch while Danny watched TV. The mornings when she and Jack had stalked around each other like two angry cats with a quivering, frightened mouse between them. It all rang true;
(dear God, do old scars ever stop hurting?)
horribly, horribly true.
Edmonds resumed, "But things have changed. You know, schizoid behavior is a pretty common thing in children. It's accepted, because all we adults have this unspoken agreement that children are lunatics. They have invisible friends. They may go and sit in the closet when they're depressed, withdrawing from the world. They attach talismanic importance to a special blanket, or a teddy bear, or a stuffed tiger. They suck their thumbs. When an adult sees things that aren't there, we consider him ready for the rubber room. When a child says he's seen a troll in his bedroom or a vampire outside the window, we simply smile indulgently. We have a one-sentence explanation that explains the whole range of such phenomena in children-"
"He'll grow out of it," Jack said.
Edmonds blinked. "My very words," he said. "Yes. Now I would guess that Danny was in a pretty good position to develop a full-fledged psychosis. Unhappy home life, a big imagination, the invisible friend who was so real to him that he nearly became real to you. Instead of `growing out of' is childhood schizophrenia, he might well have grown into it."
"And become autistic?" Wendy asked. She had read about autism. The word itself frightened her; it sounded like dread and white silence.
"Possible but not necessarily. He might simply have entered Tony's world someday and never come back to what he calls `real things. ' "
"God," Jack said.
"But now the basic situation has changed drastically. Mr. Torrance no longer drinks. You are in a new place where conditions have forced the three of you into a tighter family unit than ever before-certainly tighter than my own, where my wife and kids may see me for only two or three hours a day. To my mind, he is in the perfect healing situation. And I think the very fact that he is able to differentiate so sharply between Tony's world and `real things' says a lot about the fundamentally healthy state of his mind. He says that you two are no longer considering divorce. Is he as right as I think he is?"
"Yes," Wendy said, and Jack squeezed her hand tightly, almost painfully. She squeezed back.
Edmonds nodded. "He really doesn't need Tony anymore. Danny is flushing him out of his system. Tony no longer brings pleasant visions but hostile nightmares that are too frightening for him to remember except fragmentarily. He internalized Tony during a difficult-desperate-life situation, and Tony is not leaving easily. But he is leaving. Your son is a little like a junkie kicking the habit."
He stood up, and the Torrances stood also.
"As I said, I'm not a psychiatrist. If the nightmares are still continuing when your job at the Overlook ends next spring, Mr. Torrance, I would strongly urge you to take him to this man in Boulder."
"I will."
"Well, let's go out and tell him he can go home," Edmonds said.
"I want to thank you," Jack told him painfully. "I feel better about all this than I have in a very long time."
"So do I," Wendy said.
At the door, Edmonds paused and looked at Wendy. "Do you or did you have a sister, Mrs. Torrance? Named Aileen?"
Wendy looked at him, surprised. "Yes, I did. She was killed outside our home in Somersworth, New Hampshire, when she was six and I was ten. She chased a ball into the street and was struck by a delivery van."
"Does Danny know that?"
"I don't know. I don't think so."
"He says you were thinking about her in the waiting room."
"I was," Wendy said slowly. "For the first time in... oh, I don't know how long."
"Does the word 'redrum' mean anything to either of you?"
Wendy shook her head but Jack said, "He mentioned that word last night, just before he went to sleep. Red drum."
"No, rum," Edmonds corrected. "He was quite emphatic about that. Rum. As in the drink. The alcoholic drink."
"Oh," Jack said. "It fits in, doesn't it?" He took his handkerchief out of his back pocket and wiped his lips with it.
"Does the phrase `the shining' mean anything to you?"